"California's charter public schools are safe places to learn and work."
- California Charter School Association (CCSA)
In 2019, the California Charter School Association (CCSA) detailed the "greatest threats" facing its publicly funded private schools. If children were the focus of this trade group, problems like inexperienced teachers, low-performing schools, or preventing theft of public funds would have been on the list. Instead, the CCSA mainly focused on its need to repel efforts to make its schools accountable for the public funds they receive. Most outrageous was its opposition to requiring "charters to comply with [the] Field Act", a law passed after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake when 230 schools collapsed. It mandates "rigorous oversight of the construction of every public school" and ensures that California schools, according to earthquake expert Lucy Jones, are "the safest buildings in the world".
Thanks to the millions of dollars the Charter School Industry spends to influence politicians, the loophole that exempts these schools has been protected. A KCAL report in 2019 found that "more than 200 charter campuses in SoCal" did not have to comply with these safety measures.
The CCSA has also killed off proposals to protect its students from hazardous emissions and substances. In 2021, Assembly Bill 762 would have eliminated the disparity in regulations between public and private schools, including charters. It would have required these schools to evaluate a proposed "ï ? ? žï ? ? school site for potentially hazardous substances, hazardous emissions, or hazardous waste" ensuring that "all schools are held to the same high standard and make it clear that a charter school designation is not a license to risk our children's health and safety." It was on the fast track toward approval when State Senator Anthony J. Portantino killed the bill at the direction of the Charter School Industry.
Individual charter schools have shown that they cannot be trusted to do the right thing without these mandates. For example, I reminded the LAUSD School Board about the failed effort of the KIPP chain of charter schools to build one of its schools on a toxic waste site. These comments were made before they voted on the renewal of four of KIPP's schools:
When the public hearings for these charter renewals were held last month, a Vice President from the California Charter School Association took his time to talk about how, in his view, this Board is supposed to "serve" children in charter schools. One of the areas he pointed to was a responsibility to ensure that children are safe in the schools that they attend. I do not say this very often, but on this specific point, I agree with him.
It would seem to me that a charter school chain concerned with the safety of its students would not attempt to build a facility on the site that had "been used for approximately 90 years for manufacturing metal" and stored the resulting "hazardous materials" at the location. This would be especially true if soil samples at the site showed "levels of arsenic"200 times the amount"that is identified as safe for human health by the state of California for [a] school." It would definitely balk at a "site contaminated with toxic gases" which "can cause cancer, cognitive and motor impairments, liver damage, kidney damage, and impair one's immune system, development, reproductive system, and fertility."
This all describes land that KIPP purchased in Cudahay and then convinced local officials to forgo complete environmental studies. If it had not been for the community activists who took the charter chain to court and halted construction until these studies were performed, there might be children on that site right now. KIPP abandoned the project (and those students) rather than conduct those studies.
Any organization that needs a court to tell them that a hazardous waste site must be fully investigated before building a school has no business caring for students. In the interest of keeping children safe, all of KIPP's applications should be rejected today.
At the January 14, 2025 meeting, the Board did not bother to ask about KIPP's disregard for the safety of its students before voting to approve the renewals for three of the four KIPP schools that were up for renewal. It did deny the request for KIPP Sol for unrelated reasons. Is anyone looking out for these students, or are they just expendable?
Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD's District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him "a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles." For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.
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